Search

I attended a lovey baby shower last week. After being seated, each guest was asked to write one piece of advice for the new mom-to-be. I assumed these notes would be assembled into a cute little memory book, to be enjoyed later by the new parents.

Woops.

Instead, a “piece of advice” was pulled every 15 minutes, read aloud, and then the person responsible for the advice received a prize (from a tree decorated with gift certificates). Towards the end of the shower, I thought I was home free. After countless and sweet “enjoy every minute,” and “assemble x, y, z into scrapbooks,” guess whose advice was chosen dead last to wrap up the whole shower? Yup, mine.

“Dear Maureen, my advice to you is to listen to everyone’s advice and to tell them that it is wonderful and that you will follow it exactly…then promptly ignore it and do whatever the hell you want.”

Thankfully, it went over surprisingly well with all of the other advice-givers.

"Even if he don't, he's gotta have his dip-tet. He's gotta have his dip-tet, honey!"

I am a non-confrontational person. It’s just my nature. I know and understand the topics that cause the most vehement, animated, thoughtful, and sometimes just plain angry discourse…and usually stay very far away from them. It’s difficult to change someone’s opinion, you can just love them and respect them and hope they do the same back to you.

Growing up, you are told that there are certain topics to avoid in polite conversations. The big ones: money, politics, and religion. Do yourself a favor and add “Disney” to that list. If you ever publicly speak ill of Disney or critique it in any way, please–be prepared. People Love Disney (TM) and they think something is wrong with you if you don’t. You need to know. No one else but me is going to have the balls to tell you this. You’re welcome.